Bugs that Fly!

This week we have looked at our friends that fly. 

We started by introducing the children to some different flying bugs. Mrs English thought it would trick the children showing them a caterpillar but the Elmers are too clever 

We read the story - 'The Crunching Munching Caterpillar' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51wPJTsJxKE

EAD and Fine and Gross Motor

We talked about caterpillars and how they changed. We used our bodies to pretend we were growing into butterflies. 

The children then made some beautiful butterfly pictures, creating symmetry  by painting a design on one side of the paper and folding it over. 

Maths

We were also able to link our maths nicely to our topic. The children loved playing the ladybird game, counting the number of ladybirds on the leaves and also enjoyed positioning the different dots on the ladybird template to make different number patterns. 

SPIDERS!

This week it's SPIDERS!

We began the week by singing some of our favourite songs

Incy Wincy Spider and Hairy Fred.

The children were great at sharing their own knowledge and experience of spiders and Im sure their stories were slightly exaggerated to try and scare the grown ups.

We looked at some pictures of different spiders looking at their colours and their patterns. 

The children then loved watching a time lapse video of a spider creating their web. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5kArP5gAE 

We also read the story - 'The Very Busy Spider' by one of our favourite Authors. Eric Carle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQzyInlTm-s

After lots of talking and watching we decided to make our own spider webs. 

The children had lots of fun threading the string through the holes of the basket to create webs. We then added black fluffy pom poms pretending they were flies and used tweezers to catch them. A super fine motor activity linked to our topic. 

Writing

The children in Elmers love writing. We used our fine motor skills once again to practice drawing our own spiders. We practised drawing wobbly lines to make the web and then circular movements to create our spider bodies. 

Gross Motor and PSED

Finally, we pretended to be spiders ourselves. Sitting in a big circle we took turns to pass the string across the circle to our friends and made a giant spider web. We then listened to instructions and played the game catch the fly. The children took turns to be the spider or the flies and had to carefully climb in and out of the web to escape the spider. It was lots of fun. 

Who lives in our garden?

With so many short weeks in school last half term we didn't feel that we had given enough time to one of our favourite topics, 'Minibeasts' so we decided to just carry on!

We will be looking at a different types of minibeasts over the next few weeks. But this week it has been 'SLIMY ONES'

We talked about which are our slimy tiny creatures and have then been out and about looking for them, 

making them in the playdough and exploring them in many different ways. 

Our story of the week is one the children always love. 

'Norman the Slug with the Silly Shell'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R621g9AvOU

Gross Motor and EAD

We looked at how slugs and snails leave a shiny trail when they move. We then had a go at making out own trails by  drizzling glue onto black paper and sprinkling on silver glitter to make it super shiny. 

Understanding the World

We talked about why slugs and snails made slime and why their bodies were slimy. What else could we do with this discussion? We made our own slime!

The children followed instructions, measured out ingredients and mixed. 

What a great opportunity to encourage language as the children talked about what they could, see, smell and feel. 

Happy Eid!

With the celebration of Eid Alhada, we talked about what Eid was and how some of our children would be taking part in special celebrations with their families. 

To mark the occassion, we made Eid Cards to send our best wishes to all our Elmer families.

The children used their fine motor skills to print a painted moon and then selected different coloured stars to add to their design.  

We hope you liked them.